The renowned director Basu Chatterjee has a long list of highly reputed and entertaining films including few undisclosed remakes/inspired versions of foreign originals too (that might be a shocking news for many). However, here is an interesting case of multiple films and their rare inspiration entangle that goes back to 1930s and involves names like Amitabh Bachchan, Aamir Khan and even Alfred Hitchcock, that truly makes it a not to be missed read covering a time span of more than seven decades.
Beginning with Basu Chatterjee’s 1983 movie Pasand Apni Apni, it featured Mithun Chakraborty, Rati Agnihotri and Utpal Dutt with a plot revolving around a rich successful businessman falling in love with one of the stage artists in his town. Due to an unforced misunderstanding, the girl takes him as a simple, middle-class man and starts loving him without knowing about his real rich status. And then further misconceptions, confusions and fake representations lead to a happy ending.
Interestingly, before Chatterjee, director Mohan Segal also worked on the same idea in his 1969 film Sajan featuring Manoj Kumar and Asha Parekh, adding a murder plot into it making it a romantic thriller. The first half of Sajan revolves around the similar story progression as seen in Pasand Apni Apni. And exactly same was later followed by director A. R. Murugadoss in his Aamir Khan film Ghajini post four decades, again forming the major portion of its first half as a parallel love story running along its main revenge drama dealing with memory loss (which was also in turn highly inspired from Christopher Nolan’s psychological thriller Memento released in 2000).
Hence where Pasand Apni Apni was entirely based on the above mentioned storyline; both Sajan and Ghajini prominently used it in their first halves moving on to the other key subject of their individual scripts.
Coming to the actual source, the particular plot was actually taken from 1951 English Flick Happy Go Lovely directed by H. Bruce Humberstone which was itself loosely based on a German comedy film And Who Is Kissing Me? (1933), in which a chorus girl is mistaken as a millionaire’s girlfriend. The other versions using the same plot include a British comedy Paradise For Two aka Gaiety Girls (1937) and a Swedish comedy Kiss Her! (1940).
Next, moving on to the second half of Mohan Segal’s Sajan, it revolves around a murder mystery wherein different people present themselves as the murderer in front of police investigators, becoming a rarest of rare case.
The murder mystery plot is yet again taken from a western source that happens to be
Alec Coppel’s play
I Killed The Count (1937). It was adapted as a British film with the same title in 1939 and post a few TV adaptations was presented as a three episode mystery in the TV series
Alfred Hitchcock Presents in the year 1957 (hosted by
Hitchcock himself adding a pinch of humour coming in the beginning of its every episode).
But that is not all, as the climax of Sajan had a highly impressive sub-plot (dealt in a subtle manner) in which an old man returns from the jail completing his 10 years long sentence and finds the person very much alive for whose murder the court had sent him in prison a decade back. He accidentally murders the same man again and reveals the entire truth in the court shocking the honorable judge, who finds him ‘not guilty’ on the grounds of self-defense.
Interestingly B. R. Chopra's song-less classic KANOON (1960) commences from this very point with Jeevan admitting murdering a man for which he has already served the court's sentence 10 years back (before dying in the court itself). And then the film moves on to its other highly thought-provoking key subject.
Now the same sub-plot was presented in a much explosive manner in director T. Rama Rao’s Andhaa Kaanoon in 1983 featuring Amitabh Bachchan as the wrongly sentenced victim in a guest appearance which was nothing less than an important supporting role. The film’s courtroom sequence became the talk of the town in those days also resulting in a controversy that as usual couldn't stop the film's successful run.
Andhaa Kaanoon was a remake of 1981 Tamil film Saatam Oru Iruttarai and the debut film of Rajnikanth in Hindi cinema. It was also the first film featuring Amitabh Bachchan and Rajnikanth together on screen becoming its key attraction. The film was remade in three other Indian regional languages apart from Hindi. Interestingly Amitabh’s name in the film was similar to Javed Akhtar’s father, the famous poet Jaan Nisar Akhtar and the three villains in it were named as Amar Akbar Anthony as a homage to Manmohan Desai-Amitabh’s cult mass entertainer.
Cheers!
For interested friends,
More can be read about Alfred Hitchcock Presents – TV Series at the following link:
and about B. R. Chopra's KANOON included in BTC's list of Movies To See Before You Die at the following link:
(*Article Updated in 2018)
(Thanks to Madhurageethan, Chris and Abel Desai for the valuable info in their comments)
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The interesting link between Ghajini, Pasand Apni Apni, Sajan, Happy Go Lovely, I Killed The Count, Alfred Hitchcock, Kanoon and Andhaa Kaanoon By Bobby Sing at bobbytalkscinema.com, Inspired Movies, Inspired Cinema, Plagiarism in Hindi Cinema, Borrowed Concepts, Inspired Plots, Cinema Gets Inspired, Inspiration from World Cinema Listing by Bobby Sing
